Don’t know what makes the adventurers come to Sandy Eggo in search of trunk rides in the mighty Varga Kachina. Don’t know how someone who’s never flown feels the need to try something Really Different behind someone they don’t know at all. I guess I’m just glad that they do. Not for the $25 per hour that I get flying them around, really. And not only for the quiet joy it brings me to make total strangers appreciate, for however short a time, the gift of flight. Not even for the extra 0.9 in my log book. It’s a little bit of all those things of course. But mostly I fly because I have to.
And it’s nice when someone else pays.
Three flights today down at the local patch. The first were a father and son team from the Great White Up taking turns on half hour “learn to flies”, which are basically a few turns to get the swing of it, then a trip down south via the shoreline transition route through San Diego Lindbergh’s Class B airspace from Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach to the Ocean Beach pier. From OB pier we tune up North Island Tower for the trip through San Diego Bay – don’t overfly the warships – tagging up on the east end of the Coronado Bay Bridge before heading back north and crossing over Lindbergh over their Delta Taxiway at 1000 feet or above. Jet liners landing beneath us every few minutes or so.
Dad took his spin at the wheel before deciding that, all things considered? He’d rather leave the flying to me. Which, no problem, that’s what I’m here for.
The second set were a pair of young men up from Mexico, one of them hailing from the capital city, t’other being a Brazilian. My man was all smiles and gollies throughout, cabron. The third set were a pair of Frenchmen living in Los Angeles down for a dog fight, the one an antique and classic car dealer – it’s my passion! – and his friend a restaurateur. The antique car dealer was my man, and he was all about “his passions.” Whether it was his cars, or whether it was going to be flying, or whether it was leaving go of the flight controls when it was my turn to fly. Which I had to remonstrate with him for on several occasions. For I do not mind a guest pilot gently following me on the stick when I’m demonstrating some maneuver. But I do take issue with one that sees it fit to countermand my inputs. Especially in a head-on merge, or when flying in close formation.
“My airplane,” I’d say. Followed by, “Show me your hands.” Not infrequently followed in turn by, “Both of them.”
Passion is all well and good, but the better part of flying is analytical. Which, when you come to think of it, is a kind of passion of its own.
On Friday I got the chance to rent that beat up old Citabria that I’ve been making friends with over at Gillespie. The airplane has been in an extended annual inspection, and I hadn’t flown it – or any other tailwheel aircraft – since early June. Two and a half months is a long time to go between conventional landings, and I toyed with the idea of hiring an instructor. But the winds were mostly calm, and I believed that I’d mostly figured that particular airplane out.
Which was mostly true. I forgot to haul aft on the stick while starting the engine, which is considered points on for style among the conventional gear set. It being remotely possible that an engine surge can kick the tail up in the sky – and the prop down to the tarmac – if you haven’t got the former properly pinned to the ground. I get that right about half the time, and when I forget it’s because with one hand on the starter button on the dashboard and the other on the mixture control, ready to go full rich when the engine catches, I often find myself one hand short of the absolute need. The guilt that comes from not having three hands on start reminds me to properly position the controls for taxiing on downwind and crosswind. “Climb into the wind, dive away from it.”
On the runway, power up and stick forward. The tail comes up at maybe 30-35 knots, and it’s only a 150HP engine so the nose only kicks to the left from gyroscopic precession just a little, if only to make sure you’re paying attention. At sixty knots it’s time to tease her into the air, and with just me on board she’s only too happy to comply. Eighty knots is best climb, and it seems like we’re on an elevator as the ground falls away. Runway 19 falls behind me, and with it the opportunity to bail out crosswind if the engine quits. I’ve still got the parallel runway going the other direction, but now it’s time to turn downwind, leading the aileron input with just a little rudder. She seems to appreciate just a little rudder.
Out by El Capitan I put her through an aileron roll, just because I can. In a military jet you pick the nose up maybe ten degrees, and the maneuver is done with roll inputs only, the nose ending right back on the horizon again when you’re done. The Citabria seems to prefer about twenty degrees nose high, and it takes full aileron and rudder in the direction you want to go, the nose burying itself 20 degrees nose low. Back comes the throttle to prevent the fixed pitch prop from overspeeding on the recovery.
Three perfectly acceptable stall landings at Ramona, followed by some of the best wheel landings I’ve done to date. There was a good article in AOPA about landing technique that touched specifically on wheel landings, something I’ve always struggled just a little with. Never knowing if it was going to be perfect, acceptable or an abortion. Lacking that necessary confidence that, should a wheel landing be necessary, I had what it took to peg it. There are many different teaching techniques.
This one worked for me:
My own breakthrough at tailwheel landings came in a Cessna 170, a close civilian cousin to the Bird Dog, on a summer day in Memphis. I had been going around and around the pattern at my local airport trying—and failing—to “pin” the mains to the ground on wheel-landing attempts. Things would go just fine until I was one or two feet off the surface. Then I’d get ready to decisively add forward pressure to pin the mains on. But as soon as I tried, I’d bounce back into the air.
The more I pushed, the bigger the bounces got. Eventually, I’d admit defeat, add power, and go around. Three-point landings were no problem.
I finally put the airplane away after leaving an inordinate amount of rubber on the pavement. Frustrated, sweaty, and miffed by my inability to gracefully land the slow-moving Cessna, I stubbornly resolved to keep trying. But I needed a Coke first and went inside the airport’s FBO to retrieve one.
The old guy had been watching, and he followed me to the vending machine. There, he asked if I wanted him to share the secret of wheel landings. Of course!
He stood close and softly said: “Don’t land.”
I stared back blankly.
“I mean it,” he said. “Don’t land. Try to fly one foot off the ground the entire length of the runway. Intellectually, we both know you won’t be carrying enough power to maintain level flight that long. But just project your mind down the runway—all the way down the runway—and tell yourself you’re going to keep on flying. Be surprised when those main wheels kiss the ground.”
But what about the forward stick? Don’t I need to be ready to push at just the right instant? If I wait a fraction of a second too long, won’t I miss my chance? The old man shook his head.
“As long as you’re working the stick aft when the wheels touch, your descent rate will be next to nothing, and the mains will just roll on,” he said. “You’ll have all day to add forward stick. But if you anticipate the landing, then you’re relaxing the back-pressure too soon, and that’ll cause a bounce every time. As you’ve already seen, once the bouncing starts, it just gets worse.”
The old man’s advice cracked the code, and I started consistently making smooth wheel landings soon after. As long as I thought about flying, the landings went fine. The second I thought about landing, the mains touched too hard, the tail sank, the angle of attack increased, and I was airborne again.
I never met the old codger, but his advice worked perfectly for me. Fly formation off the runway, ease the power back and once the mains kiss the tarmac, take your time going forward on the stick. Reset back aft again once the tail starts to stall. A big part of this business is passing it all along.
In flying, you never really want to say that you’ve got something licked, because it tempts fate. You never really want to believe it, even if you don’t say a word, because complacency breeds contempt, contempt antagonizes fate, and the gods of aviation will be appeased.
Headed back to Gillespie for an uneventful landing, taxi clear, put her to bed. There’s an older gentleman who flies a Piper Cherokee on Friday afternoons, about the same time I do. We’ve chatted half a dozen times, and I finally introduced myself.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said.
“Well, the plane’s been in annual.”
“She’s looking good he said,” clearly intending it as a kind of compliment. His own machine showing a fair amount of TLC.
“It’s not my plane,” I answered, looking at the knocked about Citabria. “Just a rental. I’ve got daughters.”
Which might have seemed a non sequitur to the uninitiated.
He nodded sagely.
All of this, I realize, reading over it: It’s all a long walk to a small house. I can’t really explain the feeling of taking flight. Of performing an aileron roll that recovers right on the entry heading. Of pegging a wheel landing. The feeling of being alone with your thoughts for extended moments and just. Living in each and every one of them. I can’t paint that canvas in the way that a stranger passing by can stop, look and suddenly see. See what he hadn’t seen before.
I just know that there’s something inside me that needs it. And that part of this business is passing it all along.
yer a lucky man…. and, what ever may come, please don’t stop writing.
as with the gods of aviation, the Muses, once they have you, will be appeased. the world is a better place with your scribblings….
IMHO, of course.
Lex, if you have a smooth, mellifluous and dulcet voice to go with your superb writing, you should be on radio or TV. At the very least you should be writing professionally. I’ve only read about flying, never had a stick in my hand or rudder pedals under my feet, but you have me right there with you.
Lex, have you ever listened to “A Prairie Home Companion?” The radio show hosted by Garrison Keillor, not the book by the same guy.
At the end of the show he does a sort of soliloquy, his thoughts on the passing scene in Lake Woebegone (where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average), a fictional town set in Minnesota.
It’s on the web if you prefer. http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/
It strikes me that what you do here is similar, you’re giving us a commentary on the passing scene and we interact during the week, but on the weekend it’s a contemplative, introspective look at your own self and your particular journey through life.
I like it. Put it on the radio and Kick Keillor’s Ass in the ratings.
The show itself is pretty much rubbish these days, following the same formula as before but without the originality. Full disclosure, I’m a conservative South Dakotan and Keillor is a liberal Minnesotan, so we were bound to cross opinions at some point. Garrison had a stroke in 2009, aged 67, with a wife and daughter perhaps now entering high school. It seems to have slowed him little.
His voice is unchanged, and it is a voice perfectly suited to your musings.
But the soliloquy? He made a book and a radio show and a career out of it. You can do the same. People will pay you for your thoughts! Plus you’ve better material.
Who knows, it might just offset the All-Girl Spending Team’s outlays.
Can you think of a better retirement than writing and being given a check for same?
I understand you were pondering a book full of Rhythms… Write it already!
– Max
I stopped listening to Kiellor around 2002, when his politics became a part of the show. A good 15 minutes of every 2 hour show would be his venomousnes against Mr. Bush and the conservatives. It wasn’t 15 minutes in a block, but some snarky comments here, some inviction there, and it cost him my listernership. Wisconsin Public Radio still hasarry Meillor, a gifted talk show host, who in general does not allow politics to enter his show, which can be heard online at http://www.wpr.org. His first Wednesday of the month show, from 1100=1230 Central, on Wisconsin Wildlife, is a must listen to. here’s a link to WPR’s audio archivew of Larry;s show
http://www.wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=mlrLarry's show
Being a man of the English language, I bet Lex would like Says You, a quiz show on words. A list of when each of you can find it in your area:
http://www.saysyou.net/station_list/
I think Lex would easily out do Mr. Keillor, due to a lower snide content. The News From Lake Woebegon is still very amusing, but the rest of the show can cancel it out.
To paraphrase the movie, “Field of Dreams”, “Write it! and publishers will come!”
For me, the very occasional spin during a flight like the ones you describe is the only way I’ll ever get to fly an aircraft except as a passenger in coach in some jetliner.
I love aviation, but neither my health nor my finances allow me to gain my license, let alone rent or buy a light aircraft or even a microlight.
And there no doubt are many people like me.
To us, services like the one you provide are the closest connection we can get to aviation, to smelling the grease before it gets stale in a museum and without the massive crowds of an airshow.
Sadly, over here the experience costs a lot more than $25, €125 is not unheard of for a 20-30 minute hop around the pattern, making it something to do once every few years, no more.
A flight with Lex costs quite a bit more than $25, that’s just his share.
“It’s just a rental. I’ve got daughters.” That cracked me up. Gotta love my boys… other than the consistent medical expenses for breaking bones and such.
Lex,
You probably don’t recall an exchange you and I had once a coupla or more years back but I do. I think you had yet to “stack arms” but I remember you said something about GA hadn’t excited you in your brief experiences with it up to that point. I have known military aviator guys like yourself who have flown thru the Mach in their careers and stopped flying altogether when they retired. In our brief acquaintences and reading your blog, I figured you weren’t one of them.
It is a gift from the Almighty and it’s ALL good isn’t it?
Best,
Dust
Best,
I also have friends who flew fast movers and decided they’d never enjoy flying anything “slow” but there’s plenty of other ex-mil pilots who will fly as long as they breathe. They regard every CAVU day is wasted if not in the air. If you love aviation, you probably agree.
Lex, you do a good job of describing the joy of flight, but maybe I’m biased, being a private pilot. I wish I could figure out a way to get someone else to pay for it, though. I’m working on a flight instructor rating, so maybe when I retire for the 3rd time I’ll while away my remaining years teaching kids to fly.
THE take-away musing:
“Passion is all well and good, but the better part of flying is analytical. Which, when you come to think of it, is a passion of its own.”
Lex,
Reference aileron rolls the Citabira. Are you wearing a chute? I saw you mentioned bailout.
No parachute. The way I interpret the FARs is that they are not required in single-pilot flight, but you’d have to wear a pair if you were carrying someone else. And the bailout I was referring to was to the off-duty runway should the engine quit, rather than parachuting.
With the Citabria’s glide ratio, I think you’d be safer in an off-airport landing than a parachute descent, so long as you weren’t spinning or what have you.
Thanks, that helps. When I was doing my initial and advanced aerobatic courses in a Champ, Starduster II, Citabria and Aerospatiale Robin, we had the chutes sometimes and other times we did not. Frankly, I’ve never jumped and agree that unless something dire has happened to the airframe, I too, am staying with the craft.
Also, my spelling is a constant source of concern on this post and I really do not like reading my posts later on only to discover I’ve misspelled an important word or two….Citabria in the instant case ……is airbatic spelled backwards.
Hopefully I’ve redeemed my good standing with this bit of spelling trivia (-:
Once in a BFR the instructor asked me when parachutes were required. I answered and he said something about “when you perform aerobatics..”. I pointed out that not required when solo. He kinda argued with me so we went to the book. He finally admitted that he learned something new everyday.
The Muse – it is strong no matter what the passion and direction it leads you.
The feeling of being alone with your thoughts for extended moments and just. Living in each and every one of them.
Flying doesn’t do that for me; photography and other artistic pursuits do. Something in that kind of focus that is required to do the job and do it well. Of course photography and the like don’t involve leaving terra firma and tempting the gods.
But a muse is a muse. And you tell it beautifully, as usual.
Virgil was struck by the same line that I was:
“Passion is all well and good, but the better part of flying is analytical. Which, when you come to think of it, is a passion of its own.”
I’m civilian (regret that, but probably would have washed out anyhow), and I’ve never flown, but a lot of what I read in aviation blogs actually applies (in my view) very well to my own passion, which is teaching. The line above, for example. Many teachers talk loftily about the ‘art’ of teaching, and working with the ‘flow’ of a classroom, but I keep seeing how good instruction is grounded in clear understanding, and direct communication of fundamentals. I couldn’t tell an aileron from an alligator, but the respect for tradition, appreciation of basics, reverence toward those who paid the way, awe of the beauty, and humility to how it all comes together that I sense in our host’s writings are a constant encouragement to keep analyzing (and improving) my own work.
‘I just know that there’s something inside me that needs it. And that part of this business is passing it all along.’
And by that passing along, we are all made richer and wiser. Thank you Captain.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Lex/
RE: Comments by Peter Warner.
Not just ANYBODY who writes can inspire comments like that..
Outlook remains open throughout the day, with RSS feeds dropping their new ‘Unread’ messages into queue upon arrival. All the rest gets dealt with, Neptunus Lex being saved for last…dessert after chewing through the hard tack. Inexorably drawn…savoring the exchanges…always looking forward to the next.
If I may say, Skipper, the finest of Ready Rooms.
PS
I am so gonna catch hell for this.
Filched this entry from elsewhere, but anybody here think our resident AW1 does NOT need a bigger dining room table? For all the unannounced dinner guests? Or, better yet, needs to open that roadside cafe? Need to come up with a catchy name for it…
I find myself drawn to sympathy with the Frenchman.
It matters not that I am in no way an aviator. But if (perhaps when) I fly with Lex, I know that I will have an intellectual certainty that he knows what he is doing, and an emotional certainty that I can do better.
XBrad- The only thing stopping you from becoming an aviator is the desire, what with the light sport pilot rating since 2002. I solo’d when I was 17 in High School, got my ticket in my early 30s but never started flying in earnest until I was in my early 50s. When I could afford it more better like. The usual things in life being the constraints: CFO- Chief Female Obstructionist (I think I owe Wilko for that sweet turn of phrase) and kids in college, work, and the greatest killer of Great Ideas and desires, money. But again, the first requirement is the love of it. Best, Dust
I like the expression but don’t remember using it. At least not in front of my wife. My “Lipstick Six” has supplied innumerable “kitchen passes” over the years knowing that flying is better than a shrink.
There is the ever present pesky problem of money but Grey Eagle has it right. There are ways to acheive the goal.
So how did two guys who like flying end up commanding armor?
Long story short. Grew up on AF bases. Always wanted to be a pilot. Had enrolled in AFROTC for freshman year. AF shut down the program – big post Vietnam draw down. The other college I applied to and was accepted only had an Army ROTC program so with the intention of transferring to another University with AFROTC after one year I went. Liked it. The Army offered me a Scholarship plus a job for 4 years. And they had Aviation and three of the Officers at that program whom I admired had flown combat in Vietnam, two in gunships and one in Birdogs. So at the time, a bird in the hand was better than a crap shoot. The 4 year job turned into a 32 year vocation but I never did go to FT Rucker although I took and passed the AFAST and physical. I had completed my first 3 year overseas tour and as a young captain with a growing family, at the time it didn’t “feel” right is the only explanation I can give. So, I fly my bugsmasher to get my “fix” and the former Lipstick 6 (also retired at the same time) also knows that I am better after my theraputic dose. As for the military aviation thing, I guess it skipped a generation, as I have SN2 headed for Iraq this fall with his unit as a Medevac Air Ambulance Plt Lder. SN3 was boarded and is awaiting the word as to his turn at FT Rucker.
Congrats to Son’s 2&3 and I appreciate the “Rest of the Story”. Thank you for your 32 years of service.
Riding a motorcycle is about as close to flying as you can get, I thought you’d like this:
Season of the Bike
by Dave Harlots (Found on the internet)
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it’s hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
Used to fly a scheduled night run in January with a load of cancelled checks in the back of the C-210 between Gaylord Michigan and Detroit with a broken heater. That is cold. Damn COLD. Just not as windy as the iron horse….although the stops in Saginaw, Lansing, Cadillac, Benton Harbor and Pontiac did little to warm us up seeing how we had to load or unload out on the ramp and go……Oh, to be young an bulletproof. Thank god for a Thermos full of hot coffee and a big rubber band to hold the wings level so we could pour a cup enroute.
I used to listen to PHC regularly, until Garrison Keillor stained his beautiful oral canvases with liberal paint. I left his audience. The comparisons to his soothing monologues are quite accurate, however, in my estimation.
I swear, Lex, your writing gives me the mental picture so vividly that I imagine feeling the airplane stall ever so subtley and hearing the tires kissing the asphalt with a short screech as you land and run out the last of airspeed before turning off the runway onto the taxiway. You come the closest anyone ever has of convincing me not to listen to the little voice in the back of my brain that says of learning to fly, “Warning: This is not for you.”
Sounds like Lex is coping with multiple addictions. This flying passion sounds pretty serious.
Hope he continues to indulge us with his tales from cockpits of all shapes and sizes. They are fun to read, even for those of us who decline to defy gravity except under great duress.
Always a good read here.
Lex,
You and I see much differently, my political beliefs being far far to the liberal (I guess today’s term would be “progressive”) bent from yours. But, I read you every night. I feel some connection, since we are fellow boatschoolers, though I have a few years on you. But, you have a gift of writing that very few possess. Even when I disagree with you, you present sound arguments, and make me think. But, most of all, you write in way that rivets attention. And, you are never more convincing than when you write about flying – even though it is passion I never felt. Keep up your great blog!
Bravo…and Thank You.
Feed Lex, Seymour!
Truely masterfull, Cap’n. I almost put both my hand’s up when I read “My plane!”